Late Fee For Late Woman's Late Library Book

A woman in New York has her panties in a twist because when she went to return a book her late mother had borrowed the library had the temerity to ask for a fifty cent late fee. Perhaps some perspective and some free advice are in order:
a. It's fifty cents.
b. It's for your late mother's library.
c. Don't pay it. Next time your mom borrows a book, they'll ask her for it.
d. Politely tell them where they can make claim against the estate.
e. You are upset and grieving, try not to make any big decisions or let little things bother you.
Granted, the librarian in question should have been a mensch and let the grieving daughter off the hook, waived the fee and kept his mouth shut about it. I wonder if he's always an insensitive jerk or if the grieving daughter had done something to provoke him. It would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall and see that transaction take place.

from Schill's blog

One celebration down, 4 to go.

He wrote that after the Sox clinched a playoff spot. Now it's two down, 3 to go. Or to put it another way: 11 more wins!

The Sox are Screwed?

I don't think so!

Civics Quiz

Take the civics quiz. I answered 52 correct out of 60. Oddly enough I got almost all the financial questions wrong, what the hell? Oh well, at least I did 17% better than those mealy mouthed Bolsheviks that Harvard keeps squeezing out.

Murder By Numbers

Don't click on this if you are easily offended.

Larry Craig Tries To Withdraw Guilty Plea

It's one thing getting caught trolling for sex in a airport shit house, it's quit another to waffle about whether or not you are guilty. Call me crazy, but I think most men would have pretty definite opinions as to their guilt or innocence under such circumstances.

What does Craig hope to gain at this point? I'd have more respect for him if were like "Damn straight I was cruising for anonymous gay sex in the crapper. I love it and can't get enough of it! Why it's a crime to solicit sex from a consenting adult is beyond me. All you busybodies need to get a life." Instead Graig is man who, by his actions, obviously feels that way, but doesn't have the grapes, one way or the other, to cop to it.

Sniper Bait

I don't know all the details, but it seems like a damn fine idea to me to bait insurgents with bomb materiel and then ventilate them as they try to steal it. Getting the goats to self select themselves from the sheep is always an ify proposition when the goats refuse to wear uniforms and do your work for you.
Of course the usual suspects have the dainties in a knot over this. Andrew Sullivan, for example, gets it wrong again:

No possibility of that tactic going wrong, is there? One dimension of committing to an indefinite occupation of Iraq, which means an indefinite war against Jihadist insurgents, is how their depravity seeps back into the US military. We've seen what has happened with torture and abuse. Even if it hadn't been authorized by the president, it's likely some of it would have crept in because of the very nature of the enemy we are engaging. Fighting this war without having it corrupt us is the great challenge we face. It gets harder and harder the longer we stay.

What? At the very, very least the people stealing det chord, C4, etc. are stealing shit from you during time of war. Sorry, they are not innocent choir boys. Much more likely they're the very insurgents that kill our troops and innocent Iraqis or the people that supply them, either way we are well rid of them. Besides if this practice becomes well known, eventually you'll see piles of bomb making materiel sitting unmolested, unused and unexploded as insurgents fear going near it. Is that such a bad thing?
If our troops, for whatever reason, killed innocent Iraqis and then planted stolen materiel on them, that's a completely different issue and should be dealt with accordingly. Judging by the news stories I've read, this is far from certain.
I have some bad news for people like Andrew Sullivan; war, any war is a filthy undertaking. You can't prevail without pushing the limits of what you're comfortable with. With bombs killing Americans and innocent Iraqis on a weekly basis, I would argue that anyone caught possessing or trying to steal explosives must be shot dead. What legitimate purpose could the stolen explosives possibly serve? In effect, the people stealing this materiel have, by their actions, identified themselves to us as our enemy. Not shooting them dead is exactly the sort of feckless, ineffectual nonsense that enables these bastards to function.

William Faulkner Born Today 1897

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work — a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail,among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed — love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

From his Noble Prize acceptance speech December 10, 1950.

I always thought the casting of John Mahoney as the psuedo Faulkner W. P. Mayhew in Barton Fink was inspired, but then again I'm probably the only geek on my block who knows which Coen brother Frances McDormand is married to. (It's Joel, the one who kinda looks like Howard Stern.)

The New York Times Erred in MoveOn's Petraeus Ad

After two weeks of navel gazing, denials, obfuscations and dissemblance the august investigation faculties at the New York Times have come to the conclusion that they erred in giving MoveOn a price break on their scurrilous full page advertisement attacking General David Petraeus. Oh, and they said the attack ad violated their own policy against publishing personal attacks. Gee, do you think? Don't they have editors there or something?

The paper's public editor Clark Hoyt, after much consultation with journalism textbooks and black plastic orbs enumerated with a white "8", came to the realization that The Times' felicitous tandem error "gave fresh ammunition to a cottage industry that loves to bash The Times as a bastion of the liberal media. " No Clark, not at all. Giving MoveOn a 54% discount and publishing an unprecedented full page personal attack on September 10 calling Gen. Petraeus a traitor during a shooting war is just an honest mistake. Taking two weeks to determine/admit what everybody already knew doesn't bode well for The Times either. What a braying Jackass.

Nails On A Blackboard

And Your Little Dog Too!

Daily Kos: Why I Have A Little Crush on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

I know I'm a Jewish lesbian and he'd probably have me killed. But still, the guy speaks some blunt truths about the Bush Administration that make me swoon...

I want to be very clear. There are certainly many things about Ahmadinejad that I abhor — locking up dissidents, executing of gay folks, denying the fact of the Holocaust, potentially adding another dangerous nuclear power to the world and, in general, stifling democracy. Even still, I can’t help but be turned on by his frank rhetoric calling out the horrors of the Bush Administration and, for that matter, generations of US foreign policy preceding.

This is a real post on Daily Kos.

I. Am. Speechless.

Hat: Tip LGF

"That Lucky Old Sun"

New Brian Wilson

(link via Instapundit)

Required Reading

Tom Maguire groks Keith Olberman.

Wow! That had to hurt! I mean Maquire, not Olberman. I don't think Olberman's brain is actually connected to anything. Pain is just a theoretical concept to him. Olberman's brain instead just sort of floats over us, raining down his accumulated wisdom...

Well, maybe not "rain down" ... or anything even like that... It does float, though.

BTW, I LUV the title of Maguire's post.

(What is grok?)

The Red Sox Are Screwed

So you have the best record in baseball and have lead the AL East since April, what do you do in September? Collapse like a fat man on a hot day with a tight neck tie. The Sox are now only 1.5 games ahead of the Evil Empire, and 7 games ahead of the nearest wild card contender, Detroit, so the Sox will probably still make the post season. But who cares? If they get there playing like this, they won't be there for long. The Yanks are peaking just when they need to, the Sox are playing like a bunch of guys who think they can snooze until October. Two words of advice numb-nuts: Wakey Wakey!

Dan Rather Sues Viacom, CBS

In the bizzaro world inside of Dan Rather's coiffed bean, he is the victim of his clearly fraudulent story of President George W. Bush's Texas National Guard service. History repeats itself the first time as tragedy the second time as farce, Rather of all people should be aware of this.

Augie's Quest

via Dean Barnett:

"John Ondrasik, the man who is Five for Fighting, is constantly looking for ways to use his talent to help make the world a better place and does so without any tendentious or childish political narrative. At this link, John has cut a video to his song "100 Years" that movingly addresses the fight against ALS. If you follow the link, good will be done; Glenn Tullman/Allscripts and Bert and Cyndie Silva are each donating $1 for every time the video is played. The video, by the way, is outstanding and moving."

List of Things I Like for Some Reason

1. Those little brown packets of Turbinado Sugar in the Raw
2. Wash n' Drys
3. John Candy
4. Old Spice
5. Goetze's Caramel Creams, or better yet Cow Tails
6. The smell of the newspaper stand at the New Haven train Station; candy and newsprint
7. Swiss Army Knives
8. Smart Wool Socks
9. A ridiculously sharp Black Ticonderoga Cedar Millennium Pencil, #2 Soft Lead
10. Black and white composition books
11. Half n' Half in a glass bottle with a paper cap
12. Library book sales
13. Prosciutto
14. Fast Self Serve Gas Pumps
15. Mouse Trap, the game
16. Fishing Tackle
17. Finding a five dollar bill on an empty street
18. Boxed shirts from the cleaners
19. Ammoman.com
20. National Lampoon
21. Coffee, Cafe Americano, Lattes, Iced Coffee, Cappuccino - essentially any liquid brewed from the Coffea arabica seed
22. Brook Trout
23. Nalgene Water Bottles
24. 45 RPM Singles
25. HP 12c Financial Calculator

Talk Like a Pirate Day

Avast me hearties, it's Talk Like a Pirate Day, which leads to the long neglected filthy Parrot joke:

A man goes into a bar and says to the bartender, “If you give me free drinks all night, I’ll entertain your customers so they will stay all night and spend a fortune on drinks.”
“Oh yeah!” says the bartender. “How are you going to do that?”
The man pulls a hamster out of his pocket and puts it on the piano. The hamster runs up and down the keyboard playing the greatest piano music anyone had ever heard. “That’s incredible!” says the bartender.
Then the man takes a parrot out of its cage and puts it on the bar. The hamster begins to play the piano again and the parrot sings along - sounding just like Pavarotti. Everyone in the bar is amazed and stays all night drinking, enthralled by the hamster/parrot act.
The bartender is delighted. “I must have these animals. Will you sell them to me?” he asks, but the man shakes his head no. “Will you sell just one then?” asks the bartender.
“OK, I’ll sell you the parrot for $2000″ the man says. The bartender is delighted and hands over the money.
A bystander tells the now-former parrot owner, “You were crazy to sell that marvelous parrot for only $2000″.
“No way,” the man replied. “The parrot’s dumb as a stump; the hamster’s a ventriloquist!”

Meteorite Hits Peru

Call me a wussy, but I am a little more than concerned about this:

Around midday Saturday, villagers were startled by an explosion and a fireball that many were convinced was an airplane crashing near their remote village, located in the high Andes department of Puno in the Desaguadero region, near the border with Bolivia.
Residents complained of headaches and vomiting brought on by a "strange odor," local health department official Jorge Lopez told Peruvian radio RPP.
Seven policemen who went to check on the reports also became ill and had to be given oxygen before being hospitalized, Lopez said.

Supposedly the extreme heat caused by friction of Earth's atmosphere is enough to sterilize a meteorite from any known pathogen. Any known pathogen. Wasn't there a Stephen King movie about this?

Seperated at Birth: Keira Knightley and Quagmire

News Flash: Lincoln Chaffee No Longer A Republican

Long time RINO Lincoln Chaffee, (Turncoat) Rhode Island, has announced that he has left the party of Lincoln, to the shock and amazement of no one.
In related news:

• Madonna (Madonna Louise Ciccone-Penn-Leone-Ritchie) announced she is not a virgin, far from. In fact she believes herself to be rather "fun".
• Conservative windbag Bill O'Reilly announced that he's really full of shit and doesn't have a shadow of a clue about 99.99999% of the stuff he has bombastic opinions about.
• Keira Knightley admitted she has a jaw bigger than Quagmire's and a bit of a weight problem before a slight breeze blew her off beyond the horizon.
• Rosie O'Donnell affirmed that the ugliness she sports on the outside is but a dim reflection of the absolute and profound hideousness on the inside.
• Hillary Clinton, in a rare moment of magnanimity and perhaps uniquely qualified to do so, donated both of her ankles to former NFL defensive lineman William Refrigerator Perry. It seems the Fridge has put on a few pounds since his playing days and he needed some stouter ankles to support his 350 lb + frame.
• Bill Clinton announced that he likes to have sexual relations and non-sexual relations with women, preferably women who are not his wife.
• The Rev. Jessie Jackson has come clean and admitted that for the last forty years the only black man he helped was the Rev. Jessie Jackson.
• Former U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R.) Minnesota admitted that he's ten times gayer than Waylon Smithers and Waylon Flowers combined, not that there's anything wrong with that.
• The makers of Tag Body Spray admitted that their product is really just crappy spray on cologne and is unlikely to get you mobbed by a bunch of young hotties unless that sort of thing happens to you all the time anyway.
• Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, said that the whole iPhone price lowering fiasco was a perfectly planned and executed ponzi scheme to identify millions of gullible people in order to placate them with a $100 credit to Apple stores where the average item costs well over $1,000. Jobs cackled hauntingly, amused by his own duplicity and brilliance, then vanished in a cloud of thick sulfurous smoke.
• The publishers of fashion magazines Elle, Vogue, Cosmo, GQ, Glamour etc. admitted that the monthly tripe they publish is without any lasting merit and more often than not harms people by creating and sustaining unrealistic notions of human worth and beauty. Between binges and purges, one unnamed editor opined that the only time her readers benefits from her publication is when they use it as a coaster or to line the cage of a small pet.

Hormones In The Children's Milk?

The FDA says no, but I have my suspicions.

Kevin Everett Will Walk Again, Thank God

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) -- Kevin Everett voluntarily moved his arms and legs on Tuesday when partially awakened, prompting a neurosurgeon to say the Buffalo
Bills' tight end would walk again -- contrary to the grim prognosis given a
day before.
"Based on our experience, the fact that he's moving so well, so early after such a catastrophic injury means he will walk again," said Dr. Barth Green, chairman of the department of neurological surgery at the University of Miami school of medicine.

It seems the early intervention by trained professionals using chilled saline solution to put Everett into a hypothermic state and thereby reducing swelling and further injury may have made the difference. Thank God for nerdy kids who study hard and grow up to be doctors. Can you imagine what his family is feeling like right now?

MoveOn.Org Shameless

9/11 Six Years Later

Some more or less random thoughts on 9/11 and the war against Islamic Extremism.

• Six years later and no further attacks on U.S. soil. Osama bin Laden may still be alive but he's living in obscurity in a cave in Goathumpistan. Good for him.


• It's nearly impossible to tell what's going on in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere because the MSM is entirely invested in seeing the U.S. defeated, so is the Democratic party. If OBL came on CNN tomorrow and begged for terms, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and The NYT would call it a defeat for George W. Bush or worse yet, accuse Karl Rove of orchestrating the whole thing for political gain.


• Six years later and some people still don't get it. By it, I mean the FACT that we are at war with Islamic extremism. While looking for "root causes" and ways to blame America first the Democratic party defines their success by America's defeat. Sounds harsh yeah? I challenge you to identify a liberal Democrat who supports UNEQUIVICALY American victory in the war against Islamic Extremism.


• Referring to General David Petraeus as General Betray-Us in the NYT, MoveOn.Org is a despicable example of what the liberal wing of the Democratic party has become, namely cheer leaders for Islamic Extremism. I challenge liberal Democrats to publicly disavow this outrage, but they won't. They are complicate in their silent approval.


• Politics make strange bed fellows, but how the liberal Democrats can cozy up with those who beheaded Danial Pearl, destroyed ancient religious statues, stone homosexuals, ban music and kite flying, beat women who refuse to wear the burka, threaten the nuclear annihilation of Israel is completely beyond me, yet there it is try to explain it away, I dare you.


• George W. Bush has many flaws and has erred in many ways, but he right on the most important question that faces our generation: Whether or not to vigorously oppose Islamic extremism or to appease it. In fifty years no one will remember or care about GWB's lack of oratory skill, it will matter that he took a stand. Because of this History will be kind to him.


• Q. How many Republicans believe that the 9/11 was an inside job? What percentage of "Truthers" are liberal Democrats? A. Almost none, almost all. And the MSM would have you believe that conservatives are stupid.


• I know that after December 7, 1941 there were Nazis in America and Americans who were all for appeasement and understanding the "root causes" of Japanese imperialism, but on the whole America rose up and opposed fascism on two fronts at great cost. Sixty six years later, Japan and Germany are democracies. Sixty Six years later and there are STILL American troops in both countries. The sad fact is, as a whole, we aren't the men and women our parents and grand parents were.


• To the Gyrenes, Zoomies, Squids and Grunts paying the price in hostile places like Anbar, Kunduz, and Academia, thank you. Your sacrifice humbles me.


• "I support the troops" is new speak for "I don't support the troops, in fact I think they're all uneducated rubes, but I have to say something to counter the accurate claims that I am unpatriotic."


• You can't be pro-troops and anti-war any more than you can't separate the man from his mission. This is not to say that you can't be critical of the war and how it's run, but calling for the immediate surrender by American forces, or a "time table for surrender" only gives the enemy hope.


• If the Democrats opposed Islamic extremism as much as the opposed the administration, the Islamicists wouldn't stand a chance.


• Calling the President, any president, a Nazi, Chimp, war criminal, etc. during a time of war is not patriotic dissent, it's libelous treason. If you don't know the difference you are probably a liberal Democrat and complicate in it.


• Enough of the lighting of candles and reciting of the names of the dead. Let them go and hunt down those who would murder yet more and kill them.

Whale Shot With .50 Caliber Machine Gun

Tribe members were being held by the Coast Guard but had not been charged, said Mark Oswell, a spokesman for the law enforcement arm of the National Marine Fisheries Service.
A preliminary report said the whale was shot with a .50-caliber machine gun, Oswell said.
Coast Guard officials created a 1,000-yard safety zone around the injured whale, which was shot about a mile east of Neah Bay in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The whale had begun heading to sea Saturday afternoon, Oswell said.
Although the tribe has subsistence fishing rights to kill whales, Oswell said preliminary information indicates the whale may have been shot illegally.
"We allow native hunts for cultural purposes. However, this does not appear to be of that nature so far," he said.

Two things: I doubt the tribe used an actual .50 caliber machine gun to shoot the whale. If they did, I wonder what the hell a tribe of 1000 people is doing with such ordnance, other than lighting up the local cetacea. Secondly, doesn't this whole thing kind of harpoon the whole concept of Native Americans living in harmony with nature?

WMTN Poll

What would you rather do?
	Give Hillary Clinton a sensual sponge bath
	Listen to John Kerry talk about his experience in Vietnam?
	Stare unremittingly into the vapid gaze of Dennis Kucinich for 30 seconds.
	Die from eating broken glass, porcupine needles and ex-lax.
	Vote for Chris Dodd.
pollcode.com free polls

Happy Birthday Joshua Chamberlain

Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, hero of the Battle of Gettysburg was born today September 8, 1828 in Brewer Maine. It would be no exaggeration to say the that the remarkable Republic which you and I enjoy today and is the envy of the world would not be possible with out men like Chamberlain.

Lady Vols Won't Play The Lady Huskies

Who can blame them? It's only natural to want an easier schedule, so why play a perennial powerhouse? Unless, of course, you want to be respected for playing and beating the best teams available. Pat Summitt, caught between bites of a live puppy, offered no comment other than the occasional grunt.

Dumbassery Of The Highest Level

Some Australian T.V. personalities were nearly shot by police snipers for trying to get within "ten meters" of GWB's hotel in Sydney, one was even dressed as Osama bin Laden. That would have been hysterical.

Chuck Hagel Will Not Run

According to Yahoo News, Nebraska Senator Chuck "The Weather Vane" Hagel will not seek a third term, nor will he run for president. Of course that's today, he may waffle, er change his mind tomorrow.

I despise Hagel. Not because he's been a critic of the war, but because when it was popular to be for it, he was for it. When the going got tough he waffled. Perhaps he can go back atop his barn and resume predicting, indicating, which way the wind blows.

Andrew Keen Vs. Insty

There seems to be a good old fashion pissing contest simmering between the Blogfather, Instapundit and new media critic Andrew Keen. I'd love to see this rise above the occasional snarky, misinformed comment or polite if un-approving book review to a full scale debate of the issue, sans ad hominem characterizations of any sort. I welcome Keen's impending ass kicking not because I don't like him, but because I disagree with him and wholeheartedly agree with Insty's take on why new media is eating old media's lunch:

And that's the story of Keen's elites overall. The Golden Age of mass culture
didn't end just because the Internet let people do their own thing. It ended
because people looked at the low - and steadily declining - quality of
mass-marketed television, radio, news, films, and music and concluded that they
could do better. And they are often right, not necessarily because the amateur
productions are so terrific (though sometimes they are), but because the big
media productions are so often dreadful.

Amen. Seriously Andrew, can you watch CBS news and wonder why no wants to watch it? This blog may be an isipid pile of regurgitated dog vomit but at least it's an honest isipid pile of regurgitated dog vomit, without Katie Couric too.

Nelson Muntz Comments to Early iPhone Buyers

Nelson Muntz has some sage words for early iPhone buyers. Ha Ha!

Luciano Pavorotti

A couple of thoughts; First, holy cow he looks like Jack Black in this performance. Secondly, what a gift it is to have sounds like that come out of your mouth and then to stand there on stage and bathe in the adoration. He was a great artist and will be missed.

Actually a third thought occurs to me as well. William F. Buckly, Jr. once said that "Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years." True then, true now. But how much greater is it that today, as long as you have broadband internet access, you can listen or watch nearly anything you can think of, or read about pretty much anything ever writen, painted, sculpted, filmed or created. From "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" to "Miserere" it's all there, imagine what the ancient greats could have done with such a wide dispersal of information.

No Hitter at Fenway: Clay Buchholz

Baseball is a game of limitless possibilities. Bill Mueller hitting two grand slams from opposites sides of the plate in a single game or 23 year old Clay Buchholz carrying a no hitter into the ninth inning in his second major league game. Is there a better metaphor in sports than the pitcher in the middle of a no-no sitting all alone in the dugout waiting for his date with history? I don't even know the kid and I can't watch it. Hell, I literally have sweaters older than him. Can you imagine the adrenaline in his system right now - only one out away? Now only one strike away, I can't stand it. Holy cow the kid did it. The only rookie to ever throw a now hitter in the long history of the Boston Red Sox. I bet he won't sleep tonight.